Olimp Racing stands out with an excellent performance at Test Days
On the eve of Gedlich Racing's first races in 2024, the Olimp Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 presented itself well in the GT Winter Series, taking place this weekend at Estoril in Portugal.
Its driver Karol Basz set the fastest time in the two days of testing on the evocative former Formula 1 track. The Polish team in fact always achieved the reference times.
In reality, the Polish team had two reasons to be optimistic ahead of the opening match of the fifth edition of the championship. Olimp's second car, a Ferrari 488 GT3 (after not fielding the 296 GT3 due to a spare parts supply problem), finished third fastest thanks to a fine lap from Krystian Korzeniowski on Friday.
Team owners Marcin and Stanislaw Jedlinski will share the weekend with Basz and Korzeniowski, which offers GT Winter Series participants two 30-minute and one 55-minute sprint races.
The only 296 in the field, managed by Rinaldi Racing, emerged from the Test Days as the second force. But the man who showed the pace of the car in the final session on Friday was the team's coach, Felipe Fernandez Laser, known among other things for his work with Michael Fassbender, when the Hollywood actor realized his dream to compete at Le Mans. Gentleman drivers Pierre Ehret and Christian Hook will share the Ferrari-Rinaldi for this weekend's races.
The GT Winter Series is already an established “off-season” challenge for Europe's top teams. Now Gedlich Racing has added two new championships to its roster, which will be contested for the first time this weekend. The GT4 Winter Series and Prototype Winter Series crews were equally hard at work during the Test Days. And they are already putting on a show.
Rinaldi demonstrated his versatility by also racing a couple of fast cars among the prototypes. 2013 ADAC GT Masters champion Daniel Keilwitz got behind the wheel of his Ligier JSP320 to set the fastest lap in the LMP3 which he will share with Steve Parrow at the weekend. The prototypes will face two 50-minute races on the historic twisting circuit.
But the tests are always something more difficult to decipher going beyond simple lap times. Let's take Mühlner Motorsport for example. The Spa-Francorchamps-based team in Belgium has used Gedlich Racing's winter program as an opportunity to carry out a “shootout” in search of a talented young driver for the place it is offering in the 2024 Prototype Cup Germany.
This week was no exception, but now the focus is on honing race skills and getting results over the weekend. It's a good example of how a team can make the most of their adventure in Iberia!
In the other brand new championship, the GT4 Winter Series, Forsetti Motorsport was the fastest on the test days with its Aston Martin Vantage GT4, followed by Elite Motorsport with its McLaren Artura GT4 and the Mercedes AMG GT4 of Schnitzelalm Racing.
But it was probably the latter team that faced the biggest problems. Joel Mesch could have been the fastest, but the man with whom he was supposed to share the Mercedes did not arrive in Lisbon in time for the test days.
Marcel Marchewicz was still stuck in Oslo on Friday, after his planned trip from Sweden to Portugal went horribly awry. All this means that Jay Mo Härtling, who already had the great task of debuting in the car's GT3 sister in the GT Winter Series races, will also replace Marchewicz in the Mercedes GT4.
Over the weekend the GT4 Winter Series will have a similar race format to the GT Winter Series, with two 30-minute rounds and a one-hour race.
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